Tychus
Character Details Tychus is a very strong offensive character due to his high dps (Damage per Second) auto attack and skills. He excels to taking down hatcheries but struggles against bosses due to the lack of single target dps. Tychus is able to hold positions very well due to his skills and auras that deal high damage to zerg units or forces zerg units to attack a flaming betty that he can place on the ground. Tychus is able to absorb a relatively good amount of damage, his health able to sustain multiple hits from bosses. Coupled together with the high movement speed from stimpack and berserk, Tychus is a force to be reckoned with. However, he struggles to stand against hybrid destroyers, who can disable him easily with graviton beam. Active Skills Toss Shredder Grenade This ability allows tychus to throw a grenade that deals high damage in a small radius. The grenade deals bonus damage against structures, thus it should be picked up early on to clear buildings quickly. This skill is usually used together with psionic storm, the unit clearing counterpart. Psionic Storm This ability allows tychus to cast a psionic storm lasting 4 seconds (can be upgraded to 8 seconds by a talent) that deals high damage to zerg units but reduced damage to structures. Thus, this skill is usually used together with toss shredder grenade to clear out buildings and units quickly early in the game. Place Flaming Betty This ability allows tychus to place a flaming betty, an immobile flamethrower that can target all enemy units and structures in 360 degrees. This skill is extremely good because it forces all zerg units and structures to attack the flaming betty due to the prioritizing system that all zerg units and structures adopt. This also affects bosses, thus flaming betty is a very good skill to learn early to mid game. Stimpack This ability, similar to the original game, gives movement speed and attack speed in exchange of health. However, this skill also uses a small amount of mana and has a cooldown. The amount of mana and health taken can be reduced by a talent. This skill is very good at all stages of the game, however players should be careful with overstimming too early as the health loss is relatively high early in the game. Tac Nuke Strike This ability, universal across all heroes, gives the character the ability to call down a tactical nuke strike at the target location after 20 seconds. Nuke damage, radius, cost, time to make and cast range can be upgraded by certain nuke talents and the nuke mastery. Nukes are very good at clearing buildings without getting close to them, thus causing no damage to be taken by the character at all. However, nukes take some time to build (6-60 seconds) and can be very costly in harder difficulties, although that can be reduced drastically by certain talents and a pyro mastery. Note: The picture shows two nukes available. Each player enters the game with a maximum of 1 nuke, but can increase the count to 2 by learning a talent. (Or mastery in pyro's case) Passive Skills Berserk Berserk increases movement speed and attack speed when tychus uses either psi storm or toss grenade. This can stack up to three times and is very useful when kiting attacks. Inspire Inspire increases maximum life, life regeneration and attack speed of crap patrol units that are nearby the character. This increases the longer the unit stays in the character's vicinity. This is very useful when pushing into heavily defended areas such as the omegalisk lair. Certain units such as liberators can have the inspire aura too, inspiring crap patrol units even when the character is not around. Adaptive Armour Adaptive armour gives extra armour when the character is hit, up to 15 times for 8 seconds. This is very useful when being surrounded by numerous units that deal very little damage by themselves but can deal high damage in packs, such as zerglings or banelings. Irradiate Aura Irradiate aura is a very useful skill when pushing into heavily defended areas. It damages nearby enemy units and structures, and the damage increases the longer the unit or structure stays in the radius. The damage ramps up even faster when multiple irradiate auras are around, and this can help to kill bosses very easily. Masteries Energy Mastery This mastery is very useful in conjunction with lightweight equipment mastery as lightweight equipment mastery will allow you to spam your skills, while energy mastery allows you to sustain your bomb throwing and storm casting madness. In addition to increasing your energy regeneration and energy maximum, this mastery also improves the delay of shield regeneration. Lightweight Equipment Mastery This mastery is almost always instantly picked up due to the usefullness early in the game. In exchange for 4000-5000 minerals, the cooldown of all active abilities are reduced. This allows tychus to spam out shredder grenades and psionic storms easily to destroy structures and kill units respectively. Weapons Research Mastery Researching this mastery is similar to the lightweight equipment mastery in the sense that it will cause tychus to spend 5000 minerals over time. This increases the overall damage of shredder grenades and tychus' auto attack, and increase the range and the attack speed of his auto attack too. This is extremely useful compared to most of the other masteries early on in the game. Allrounder Mastery This mastery is usually picked only when grinding rank points, as most players do not want to waste a mastery point on this mastery. However, when grinding rank points, games can be rather long. Thus, the extra 2 talents at the start and the extra 2 talent points every 45 minutes can help a lot. Also, energy maximum is increased, however it is rather small and energy mastery is a better bet. Iron Man Mastery A very useful mastery when playing easy, hard or mental difficulties. This protects the character's xp and gold hen he or she dies, making it a very good mastery for newer players who might die easily. Most players would want to pick this mastery if they are playing on hard and above, especially when losing all the gold when a hybrid destroyer and spore crawlers kills tychus sucks a lot. Big Game Hunter Mastery This mastery increases both auto attack and grenade damage against massive units, such as ultralisks, queens and abberations. Also, extra xp is given after killing them. This is very useful because tychus can learn more talents quickly after killing massive units. This also makes killing the ultralisks easier. Haywire Missile Mastery Almost a must-pick-mastery, haywire missile mastery causes tychus to carry a missile launcher around which shoots rockets at enemy targets every 5 seconds, dealing high damage and outranging spine crawlers. This is by far the only mastery that gives the most amount of damage early game, thus many players like to pick this when entering the game. Weakspot Mastery This mastery increases armour, auto attack and grenade damage. Compared to other masteries, weakspot mastery is considered a sub-par mastery because it does not give special benefits other than just increasing stats, which can be upgraded through certain talents. Thus, this should be one of the last few masteries players pick. Ranger Mastery Ranger mastery is not very useful early in the game unless players want to outrange spine crawlers. This mastery gives range, detection and vision range, and global psi storms. This is only useful when moving into the mutalisk area or when the leviathan boss has been activated, thus players are not advised to pick this mastery early in the game. Psionic Warrior Mastery (Unlockable Mastery) This mastery is the combined score unlock mastery. Once tychus hits a combined score of 2500, players can activate this mastery. What it does is it removes the ability to cast psi storms, instead there is now a chance to cast psi storm around the target tychus is attacking everytime tychus attacks. This is exteremely powerful due to tychus' high attack speeds of 0.5 and below. Although this mastery also reduces energy regeneration, either the perk absoption or the energy mastery can easily make up for it. Nuke Mastery An almost must have mastery, the nuke mastery gives a higher nuke radius, higher nuke damage against heroic and a global cast range. This allows tychus to call down nukes as long as there is vision. This helps to clear areas much easier, especially when the cast range for nukes is very small. However, it is not recommended to pick nuke mastery early in the game, as nukes are not needed. Close Quarter Combat Mastery This mastery gives armour, auto attack and grenade damage. Similar to the weakspot mastery, this mastery is considered sub-par for the similar reasons. It should only be activated when there are no more masteries to pick from. Armour Mastery This mastery gives armour and shield armour. It requires tychus to be lvl 10, since it does give quite a lot of armour. This is good to be picked up mid game, as it will help with surviving hard hits from bosses, especially when playing solo games. Shadow Nimbus Mastery This mastery gives a lot of movement speed and cloaking from time to time. Although this mastery sounds pretty good, it can be subsituted by the "nimble fest" talent. The cloaking is almost always useless because there will either be bosses with detection around or spore crawlers that are strewn around the map. Thus, most players opt not to choose this mastery.